Earlier this month I set up Thunderbolt/Apache Leader. Made it through part of one turn before it came down for the Wavell’s War East African Campaign.
Set it back up the other day and started going through the rules. Short term memory is shot.
However, competition arrived in the form of Enemy Coast Ahead: The Dambuster Raid. This is a solitaire, GMT game, with great looking components and programmed rules. I am working on Scenario 5, which is the “newbie’s” scenario.
Had a nice talk with Tim last night about our recent Wavell’s War game and, especially, his posted comments.
I had some real second thoughts about the validity of using scrapped unit replacement points to build new headquarters. Big sigh of relief when I checked the rules this morning and confirmed it is OK.
We also talked about the low level of victory point (VIP) totals in the game, especially since they are calculated, for the most part, in January and July, only. This makes the status of Massua absolutely critical. This city is worth three VIPs per initial phase on or after April I/II ’41 for the side that controls the city.
With this in mind, Tim’s analyses of his attack supply and railroad construction challenges are very pertinent to successful Allied play.
I think we agreed to try it again. The when is TBD.
Back from Spring Training. Tim forwarded his observations while I was in Arizona. Here they are:
I like your idea of using your RPs from scrapping units to buy back HQs. Clever!
Having no SMPs in the Sudan really hurts the British. Once I moved forward from my railheads, I couldn’t use my attack supply. My logistics problems were of distributing attack supply, rather than the Italian problem of not having any. It didn’t help that I didn’t know that I only had to build two hexes of rail line. It wasn’t until I read the appendix on transportation lines that I found out that the rest of that rail road connecting the Sudan and Eritrea had been built. Being able to rail supply into Eritrea would have really helped the British.
I was pleased with my use of the motorized SDF battalions. Those guys saved my butt more than once!
I didn’t read the OB as closely as I normally do, which hurt me. I missed the Blen 1 unit in Aden and could have built a light armored battalion several turns sooner than I actually did. I’m embarrassed as I normally carefully read the OBs, which always pays off.
I think I dispersed my forces too much. In retrospect I probably should have used both divisions together in the Sudan and moved some non divisional units down the coast (in my defense, I didn’t realize how bad those ravine hexsides were– they really help the defense). The same applies in the south where I should have stacked some colonial units with the South Africans since I had lots of colonial RPs.
I wonder if I should have taken festung Berbera and then moved into the interior…
That exchange on the South Africans really hurt! That attack came to a halt until I could bring up another division from the coast, which cost me at least a month when I really couldn’t afford it. I had a couple of other exchanges and they all hurt, especially once I had to start withdrawing units.
I didn’t use my amphibious landing ability. I wonder if I should have tried taking some of the ports from the sea or landed next to Massawa…
The weather was a real headache. In most games its pretty predictable but in this one, it wasn’t.
There are a lot of Italian ants. I’m sure from the Italian point of view, it feels like you’re getting wiped out but from the British point of view, it felt like the ants were getting ready to overwhelm the anteaters. Once the Italians can concentrate their units it gets harder to destroy them.
This weekend’s game was an adventure; with unfamiliar rules and daunting operational constraints, not to mention the sheer size of the area of operations. This will be a quick overview. Hopefully Tim will post up. I’ll add some additional observations once I get back into town.
Tim was stalled in the always unpredictable Friday Portland traffic and didn’t arrive until after 1800. We decided to spend the evening familiarizing ourselves with the East Africa specific/pertinent rules (we also decided to forgo all the optional rules as this was our first time through the game) and watching the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. That was an adventure, too.
While we have been playing Europa for way too long, this game was something different, particularly the use of attack supply, and for the Italians, the need to convert limited attack supply resources to general supply. Without general supply, the Italians, who do not have any general supply sources (only limited ones), had their attack strengths quartered, movement halved, defense halved, and lost all armored effects. Their limited aircraft assets were subject to similar constraints when out of supply. In fact, each mission was a crap shoot. With bad rolls on the success table, the mission never occurred, or worse, the aircraft went into the aborted box. And with only one ARP, that meant it was gone. To make things even better, any use of SMPs reduced the remaining pool of SMPs, with Italian capabilities becoming even more pathetic as the game wore on.
However, the Italians weren’t the only ones handicapped by logistics. Even though the British are in general supply, they have limited attack supply resources and have to move them across East Africa before they can come to grip with the Italians. While the British can assemble divisions, their use is limited as they are withdrawn from use relatively early in the game.
As you can see from the previous post, the area of operations is huge. The impact of size is compounded by the low movement rates of most units. There are very few mechanized units, and those that are in the OB have little combat power. Truck assets are worth their weight in gold. Not only can they increase an infantry’s units movements, but can also take advantage of exploitation movement. Once again, the combat power of a transportable unit (1 RE) is minimal, especially when halved if out of attack supply.
Rail capacity is low, and the amount of trackage limited. Tim will probably expand on this, but neither of us did a very good job of working with what we had.
To make even more fun, there are about 8 weather zones, and any and all of them can go from clear to grind-to-a-halt mud in a single turn.
Given all of these factors, events unfolded slowly.
Play began early Saturday. Tim had the Allies. He used three axis’ of advance. The first was down the Red Sea Coast from Sudan towards the port of Massaua (all spellings are from the maps), the second from Kenya to the southeast to secure the ports of Mogadiscio and Chismaio, with the third northeast from Kenya towards Addis Abbada. The first was aimed at gaining victory points before April II, while the second aimed at denying the Italians victory points as well as possible supplies. The third was to liberate the Ethiopian capital.
Tim made good progress on his first two axes of advance. Chismaio and Mogadiscio fell early, the Italians unable to muster more than a token defense, not helped by my unwillingness to convert a factor of attack supply into general supply. While the attack towards Massaua took more time to develop because Tim took the time to form divisions, by mid-game he was able to exploit a blunder on my part and take the city without loss. At this point, however, a combination of bad weather and sacrificial use of Italian regiments slowed the British.
The next day, Tim continued his attacks, but suffered an Exchange setback outside of Addis Abada. This, along with the need to remove some of his more powerful units for redeployment elsewhere in the Middle East, slowed his momentum and allowed me to cobble together a defensive cordon to stop his new advances towards Addis Abada from the north.
By the May II turn, we decided to devote ourselves to beer drinking and game viewing. Here’s a few photos to illustrate the course of the game. I’ll post up some other observations later.
Early Game: British Advance Towards Chismaio
Early Game: British Advance North
Mid Game: Exploiting Gap, British Take Massaua and Cut Off Italian Perimeter Defense
Mid Game: British Approach Addis AbadaMid Game: Italians Retreat Into SomalilandMid Game: British Advance South From MassauaMid Game: British Threaten Addis AbadaEnd Game: British Somaliland Still Held By Italians
End Game: British Advance Towards Addis Abada From The North
End Game: Italians Defenses Around Addis Abada
End Game: All Cleaned Up. Dogs of War Wonder What’s Next
Set it up last night and this morning. Used stencil tape to keep the small map sheets from shifting around. Had to shim the utility table to get it to match up (kind of) with the dining room table.
Big map, lots of ants. Italians have limited supply sources, which severely effects both offensive and defensive capabilities, and very few steps of attack supply to compensate. Air support for colonial units is also limited.
This will be very interesting.
The TableMap Looking North. Where Are The Ants?Map Looking West
While bogged down in Thunderbolt/Apache Leader, I took a break to finish off the Pulp elements for my BoB campaign. These are Bob Murch’s castings. Speaking of bogged down, I’m currently dealing with a bad case of painter’s block with my Copplestone White Russians. Anyway…….here’s a photo of a couple of stands of the Zeps and Mercs.
Will start playing Thunderbolt/Apache Leader tonight. Decided to stay with solo aviation games. I’ve messed around with this one before, but never quite got comfortable with it. Time for another try. BTW, this is the original, not the updated version that came out a couple of years ago. This will be a time-filler until Tim shows up Friday night for our long-awaited Wavell’s War East Africa Campaign game.
Sanity prevailed and I played The Thin Blue Line scenario, rather than the entire campaign. At my rate of play, which is one day per session, it would have been too lengthy a proposition.
The Thin Blue Line begins on August 27 and ends on September 11th. This represents the longest period of sustained German raids.
I was able to attrit the Luftwaffe, but not enough to gain a victory. However, the RAF was in good shape at game’s end with a fairly deep pool of experienced replacement pilots and plenty of replacement aircraft. At the rate things were going, an operational victory was probably two days (of game turns) away.
The hour and day card draws tended to favor the British player. What the British player cannot stand is successive German raids over the period of one game hour, or during the course of a day. The quicker the clock and calendar moves, the better for the RAF.
One thing I started doing a little too late was making sure there were enough British fighters scrambled to attack the bombers, and not just the Me-109 hunter groups. This involved massing planes and taking some risks about subsequent coverage if there were followup raids, or another series of attacks. My warning levels were consistently high which helped, and, once again, the card draw kept the clock moving. It was so similar to historical “Big Wing” theory.
Once bombers are disrupted, aborted or placed in the damage box by a fighter attack, the effectiveness of a raid is greatly diminished. Again, fate did not favor the Germans, with many raids reduced to a low factor attacks, and resulting low levels of damage and victory points.
A great game, and worthy of all the praise it has gathered over the past twenty years. My only complaint is that a couple of charts are buried in the rules, especially the Airfield Operations summary. I will copy this onto a separate sheet the next time I play.
There a couple of cards that should not be allowed to cycle through the deck. Even if the prerequisites to play the card haven’t been met, I think it would be wise to keep it in the hand until they are. I’m thinking mainly of the ‘Tsar Takes Command’ card. IIRC, there was another game we played where the central powers player didn’t play it as an event and had to wait for it to cycle back through the deck. Needless to say, the game was pretty much over when it came back to him again. I don’t think it is as big an issue for the Entente. Maybe the cards relating to US Entry fall into this category for them?
You did a much better job of remembering to entrench than I did…The level 2 trench in Brussels cost me a lot of men.
Yes, I did use attrition in the west. I was playing a lot of big replacement cards to keep the Russians from melting away (you pounded them pretty hard) and I didn’t see why I should ‘waste’ the French and British replacements by not attacking on their front. I also had some mandated offensives for the French and I was trying to wear down the Germans, which I think I had accomplished by the end of the game.
I think taking replacements every turn is pretty much a must in this game. I know you felt you had the opportunity to do some damage by playing cards as OPS cards and not taking replacements, but armies can melt away very quickly in this game.
I actually was worried that you were going to counter attack on the Italian front. The Italian armies, especially when they are reduced (like they are at the start) are not very strong. They’re good enough to capture undefended areas, but struggle against anything else… I was concerned that you would use the Austrian army in Trieste to punch through and capture Venice.
Good use of the Rathenau card. I think in the past I’ve violated my first point and usually played it for OPS…:)
You didn’t seem to get much use out of the Turks. I don’t know if it would have been worth it to build up some concentrations in the Caucasus or in Mesopotomia to threaten Baku or Ahwaz. In many ways the trick to winning POG is balancing the demands of multiple fronts and the Turks could be used to threaten those two areas (or if they’re very lucky, egypt). At the very least, they might force the Entente to spend time and OPS moving troops to the Med from other theaters.
I think it would be a good idea to eliminate the Serbs. Destroying them frees up two badly needed Austrian armies and some bulgarian troops for use elsewhere (Romania?).
Played Paths of Glory this Saturday with Tim. Helluva game and unlike any other we had played in the past. We started at 2PM and, with the exception of a 1 hour or so break for dinner, didn’t finish up until midnight. For once we stayed on task although many Henry’s were consumed. Tim played the Allies.
For those of you unfamiliar with the game, here’s a link to the BoardGameGeek page. It’s their Number 2 rated wargame. Here’s another link to the living rules over at GMT Games. GMT is to be commended for their willingness to make the rules available along with necessary changes.
I managed to bungle the first few turns by misplaying the Falkenhayn card. This is a critical card that not only allows German forces greater operational flexibility but, when combined with combat cards, allows for a devastating attack on French fortresses.
Having missed that opportunity, I began to entrench along the Western Front. My efforts were generally successful, but set an ugly precedent for die rolling. To successfully entrench, one needs low die rolls. Unfortunately, this low rolling continued during several later critical combats where high D6 rolls are needed.
Frustrated in the West, I turned my attentions Eastward. Here, Tim had driven back my Austrians and it was only through some fortunate card draws for Austrian reinforcements, as well as a shifting of German troops to the East, that the front stabilized.
Stymied, I had no choice but to unleash the Mad Dog Bulgarians. Tim countered the threat posed by this crew of corps-sized-ants, by bringing Italy into the war. His lightning campaign in the Alps threatened Munich and Strasberg (!!!!!) forcing a southwestward shift of the already over-extended Austrians.
While this farcical sequence of Balkan events was taking place, Tim began a series of attritional attacks in the West. Ignoring howls of protest from Paris, and accusations of genocidal Francophobia, Tim took a page from the Neville playbook and relied on the French Army to repeatedly pound the heavily improved German positions in Flanders. These attacks liberated Brussels, and forced me to once again use strategic cards for operational replacements.
The result was no Russian Revolution. The revolution requires the play of a sequence of cards after a certain level of victory points have been attained. Use the card(s) for other than the intended purpose(s) and the sequence is delayed until the deck is exhausted and reshuffled.
I still pursued an eastern strategy, and even managed to isolate Riga while advancing deep into northern Russia. However, these gains could not be followed up given the need to create replacements and feed Tim’s Western Front meat grinder.
We shut it down at the beginning of the Winter, 1918 turn. While the issue hung in the balance, Tim definitely had the operational edge. My only real hope of victory was to somehow draw the right Russian Revolution cards, releasing German troops for the Western Front, and Austrians to deal with the Balkans and Italy.
Unfortunately, all of this was about three turns too late, and required just a little too much luck. Sounds kinda familiar, doesn’t it?
Here’s a few photos of the situation, by front, at Journey’s End.
Middle East: Not much going on hereThe Balkans: AntroicideRussia: Bogged DownItaly: Arditi and Bersaglieri in Munich?Western Front: Attrition
